YEREVAN, APRIL 29, ARMENPRESS. After April four-day war Sven and Holger Dietrich brothers were the first to visit the Nagorno Karabakh. Sven is a member of Berlin City Council, and Holger is a photographer. In an interview with “Armenpress” they told about their visit to Artsakh after the war, their impressions, as well as the possible cooperation with the local organizations.

-I would like to know why did you decide to visit Nagorno Karabakh one of thousands of places in the world?

Sven Dietrich-I first visited Karabakh in May 2015 to observe the elections in there. It is a perfect country, people are very friendly. The only problem is that it is not recognized. Then we had several discussions on different projects with the NKR Permanent Representative to Germany Harutyun Grigoryan.

Holger Dietrich-We were discussing how to make it possible to organize cultural events and visits in Karabakh. I have visited many countries in the world, however, this was something new for me that caught my attention. We wanted to do something to develop tourism in Karabakh since it has excellent opportunities for that. The landscape is very diverse starting from mountains to almost deserts.

-Four-day war launched on early of April. How did it happen that it did not spoil your plans. Wasn’t there any fear or apprehension?

Holder Dietrich-The result of the first visit was to organize a photo exhibition about Nagorno Karabakh in Berlin, Germany. We found Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany which was ready to support the project. They offered us quite a large space. There were three main themes: “Beauty of Nagorno Karabakh”, “Hope for Nagorno Karabakh” which was mainly devoted to schools and children, and the last one was devoted to the abandoned villages, which was to some extent a requiem for Karabakh first war.

So we have already planned our second visit when we heard about the war by radio. Of course, we know that firings continued regularly in the line of contact, although I don’t like this expression since there is no contact in that line, however, we started to regularly follow the news to know what was going on in Karabakh. Of course, we had doubts, some of our relatives ad friends told us that we got crazy to visit there: you never know what will happen in the war zone, however, my motivation of this visit and implementation of the project was that it is home to nearly 150000 people, so if they live there, we also can go there.

We wanted to have deeper experience about Nagorno Karabakh. The only problem is that we do not know the language which creates difficulties in communicating with the local people.

Sven Dietrich-Another motivation of our visit to Karabakh is that we wanted to get precise information since little information is provided in Germany on Nagorno Karabakh since from the very start of the war. This issue has been ignored to some extent by political figures, and the ordinary residents are not well informed. That’s why we decided to organize an exhibition and inform the German pubic about the situation in Karabakh.

Of course, we wanted to inform also about the isolated situation of Nagorno Karabakh. We know that if you want to buy something or import it to Karabakh, it is very difficult, so we should understand that this isolation is an important issue which should be resolved.

-What do you think, why the information on this issue is lacking? Maybe the European public is not interested with this topic or just there are some other issues more important than this?

Sven Dietrich-Karabakh war was followed by wars in Yugoslavia, Kosovo. After that there were no wars over 25 years, that’s why there was no reason to talk on this issue. For instance, German Spiegel journal released information on Karabakh only on April 6.

The situation in the region was mainly connected with the tensions between Russia and Turkey, and I think, that this somehow renders Azerbaijan to attack. Of course, the strange relations of European countries with Turkey also have their impact in this situation. I think that they sell them in Turkey as a result of refugee problems. That is the reason that German Foreign Minister makes very weak statements, whereas the German media sees war as the only reason to write about Nagorno Karabakh. This is very cynical approach.

In fact, from the beginning we adopted a neutral stance on this issue since we wanted to understand what was going on. After this visit we no longer have neutral stance. We perfectly understand the situation in Nagorno Karabakh. We have visited those places where the war was going on. We have seen the school and hospital which were damaged during the war. We have also visited Martakert and Mataghis not only that we were are interested, but also we wanted to understand what the Azerbaijani side conducts there. Before to make judgments, I think you should see what is happening there.

Holger Dietrich-It was an opportunity for us to inform the public about the situation. We hold meetings with ordinary citizens and NGOs. We met also Minister for Cultural and Youth Affairs of Karabakh who was very open to our ideas and suggestions. We are the first Germans who visited Karabakh after April 2 and it’s ridiculous.

-Sven, do you see any opportunity of local level cooperation with Nagorno Karabakh?

Sven Dietrch-There are several projects. We try to implement several cultural projects. Of course, currently we work on the implementation of the exhibition project in cooperation with Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, however, we want to understand whether they will be interested in cooperation with this region.

Holger Dietrich-I would like to bring another example. We met Svetlana in Stepanakert: she speaks and teaches German perfectly, but she doesn’t receive any assistance from Goethe Institute since it is located in Baku. In reality, she does what the Institute should do in terms of spreading German and German culture. We will try to assist her.

-Holger, during this visit you also shoot those places damaged by the war. Do you plan to include these photos in the exhibition?

Holger Dietrich-Of course, that is my desire. For me it is also to some extent a personal issue.I was born in Potsdam and my earliest memories were the scenes of the city damaged as a result of war. Now you visit another region and see the same here. In this case it is clear that we will show facts rather than the beauty.

Interview by Armen Ghazaryan